President Biden just shut down a Chinese crypto miner in Wyoming—but dozens of others remain

A Chinese Bitcoin miner is being evicted from his land in Wyoming on the orders of President Joe Biden. In the statement made by the White House, it was stated that the administration gave the miner and his partners 120 days to sell the land where they operate due to espionage concerns. MineOne Partners operates the mine, located less than a mile from Francis E. Warren Air Force Base, where intercontinental nuclear missiles are stored.

“The existence of proprietary and foreign-sourced equipment that could potentially facilitate surveillance and espionage activities poses a national security risk,” the White House said. Neither MineOne Partners nor China’s embassy in the United States immediately responded to requests for comment.

According to the statement, MineOne purchased the land in 2022 and later installed cryptocurrency mining equipment. At that time, the transaction was not submitted to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, but was later reported to them by a member of the public. CFIUS later determined after an investigation that the purchase had national security implications. Last October, the New York Times reported that the tip came from Microsoft, which operates a nearby data center supporting the Pentagon, and warned that it could allow the Chinese to “maintain full-spectrum intelligence gathering operations.”

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement that the decision “underscores the critical watchdog role that CFIUS serves to ensure that foreign investment does not harm our national security.”

‘Too many Bitcoin miners’

Land purchases from Chinese companies in the United States are “definitely increasing,” Anita Nikolich, principal investigator of technology innovation at the University of Illinois, told Fortune. As a result, last year, 33 states introduced 81 bills to restrict land purchases by foreigners, the Washington Post reported. Nikolich says the order against the Wyoming operation isn’t an attack on Bitcoin miners specifically, but rather part of a bigger picture: There are “many new indicators of hostile activity” on critical infrastructure and foreign land purchases near that infrastructure. The Biden administration “cannot ignore.”

In February, it was revealed that a Chinese hacking network known as Volt Typhoon had been dormant in US aircraft, train and water infrastructure for five years, “pre-positioning” itself for future sabotage, intelligence services said in a statement. FBI director Christopher Wray told a US committee hearing shortly afterwards that Typhoon Volt was “the defining threat of our generation”.

The story continues

MineOne is just one of the Chinese miners building data centers in the Southern states and the Midwest, where farmland is plentiful and energy is cheap. “We see that there are a lot of Bitcoin miners,” Nikolich says about this increase. The Times found that Chinese-owned or operated miners in at least 12 states use the equivalent of 1.5 million homes. These are a result of the Chinese Communist Party banning Bitcoin mining in 2021, elevating the country’s former status as an industry leader and mandating operations abroad.

At least one of those mines, Polaris Technologies in Muskogee, Oklahoma, may have circumvented state laws regarding foreign-owned land purchases. The miner purchased an industrial site from the State of Oklahoma last May, and title to the land was obtained, Fortune shows. The company is using the land to build a $100 million data center. Polaris CEO Meng Zhang is a Chinese national and former employee of Bitmain, a Chinese company that produces 90% of Bitcoin mining machines and ASICs (a type of advanced semiconductors).

Some miners have been incentivized to build data centers through deals that give companies access to the network at a discount. For example, Bison Blockchain, a Chinese miner, won cheaper-than-usual rates from the state of Wyoming and its energy subsidiary Black Hills Energy. Many companies came to bid on the agreement, which stated, “We will buy energy from you for a few years, and in return you will build a substation specifically for our data center,” Nikolich said.

This statement also dovetails with Biden’s announcement today that he is increasing tariffs on various Chinese imports that he argues are unfairly subsidized by Beijing and undermine U.S. rivals. Affected imports include semiconductors, which could increase production costs for U.S. miners, 98% of which rely on mining ASICs produced by Chinese firms.

This story first appeared on Fortune.com